


Strung

by Nerve_Itch



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 'play' is possibly not the right word?, Chains, Graphic threat of non-con, Gunplay, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-con themes, Violence, but not from the most comforting of sources, meathooks, terrible things happening to Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerve_Itch/pseuds/Nerve_Itch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Naka-Choko. </p>
<p>Still seeking the upper hand against Hannibal, Will attempts negotiations with Mason. <br/>Mason's not good with rationality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strung

“I don’t think you should  _be_  here, Mr Graham.”

The voice carries through the barn with the authority of someone who has never had to temper its volume or its meaning. Will reaches for the gun inside his coat pocket, finds reassurance in the friction of leather gloves against the trigger and straightens his back.

“Your  _people_  are not entirely clear about your availability” he says, turning towards the place Mason’s voice carries from. The near empty barn stinks of fresh slaughtered meat, not livestock. It suits Mason, his straw-patterned hair mirrored in the matted hay surrounding him. His grey suit compliments the hue of the three-tiered chain and hook suspended from a beam between them. Will’s comparative sleekness in this setting lends the impression of a cat that’s trying to escape the farmer’s sack.

“You’re saying that you  _wanted_  to find me? For me to find you?” asks Mason, his lack of insight to the immediate reality contrasting favourably with the relentless perceptive analysis that Will is so used to from Hannibal. It’s almost tempting to believe that in this scenario, Will may be at an advantage. His confidence is buttoned in by the knowledge that his wits, honed as they are, may not be the strongest weapon against something as infallible as Mason’s bullish ego.

“I believe we’re overdue a discussion about your…legacy” says Will. His uncertainty is disguised in the way he chews the end of his words.

“Oh,  _you_ , of course. Margot’s told me about  _you_ ,” he intones, advancing with his rickety swagger until he’s a body length away from where Will is standing. Will keeps his hand on the gun and juts his jaw into a grimace, the kind of gesture he’s practiced when feigning a dominant sort of confidence.

“The thing with Margot is…she’s only doing this thing she’s doing because of  _me_. You’re not exactly a feature of her schemes. You’re uh, not really her  _type_.”

Mason’s attempts to sting his pride miss any sort of mark of sensitivity.

“Oh, this isn’t about me, Mason” says Will and his voice twists. Mason grins, his teeth bared.

“I’m not sure of that” he says, his teeth almost gnashing at the ends of his words.

“No, Mason, this is about _you_.”

He shrugs. “Most things are.”

“You’re currently the sole heir to the family fortune, no?”

Even in its crudest form, the subject of money colours Mason’s face with a gloating smugness.

“If this is about Margot’s little problem, that’ll take no more than a coathanger to fix. You’ve wasted a journey out here.” He takes a step forward, studying Will in the same way he’d size up a pig. Will’s shoulders tense, and the residual nerve damage from his bullet wound sends a warning spasm down his arm. He solidifies his posture and stares back at Mason.

“Oh, I’m not doubting the hold you have over Margot” he says. “She showed me, I get that. But she has an ally.”

Mason tilts his head back, propping his elbow to cup his chin in a caricature gesture of contemplation. He still looks like he’s handling livestock, like he never has an interaction where he allows himself to see the presence of humanity in whatever company he keeps.

“You’re hardly an ally I need to be worried about” laughs Mason, moving a long hand to the chain holding the meat hook, using it to centre his weight as he propels himself another step forward. His breath is close enough to heat Will’s face.

“I’m not the ally you need to be concerned with. I’m the warning.”

Mason takes a moment interpret Will’s meaning. His mouth stretches, tenses, then settles around its next words.

“And so you’re what, you’re ridding yourself of her and trying to earn my favour by, what is this, a favour to  _me_? I don’t like favours, Mr Graham. They always come with an expectation.” A tug on the chain rattles the metal and it sounds like a continuation of Mason’s voice.

Will doesn’t try to explain to Mason that he’s not turning Margot over to him – she’s already so tight inside Mason’s grip that it would be all he could do to try and hang on to her if he wanted to. He doesn’t explain that Margot already has her escape planned and Will is disposable in this, beyond the tentative gesture of not quite friendship that they’ve shared and the kinship that develops between two people manipulated beyond recognition.

“I’m suggesting a negotiation, Mason.”

When he uses his first name, it’s a way of reducing him to a person, not a behemoth of sadism. Will takes small comfort in it.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to negotiate with me,  _Will_.”

Will smiles tightly because there’s no other expression for his face to fall into that wouldn’t convey pent up fear, fury and loathing.

“The person who is setting himself up as your opponent is more of a threat to you than you realise” says Will, used to how familiar this warning sounds on his tongue and anticipating the wariness or outright incredulity that usually follows.

“Oh so it’s  _definitely_  not you then” he replies, childlike, petulant and utterly ignorant. Mason keeps one arm wrapped around the chain and keeps his gaze fixed below Will’s eye line. Staring at the specimen, not at the person. “You’re about as scary as a puppy kicked to the bottom of a well.”

Will chooses to dismiss the fear that there’s truth in Mason’s statement. “Hannibal is planning your end, Mason.”

“A lot of people have. Notice I’m still here?”

The sneer that pulls at Will’s mouth is accidental but noted by Mason. He basks in it like it means endorsement, not criticism.

“You seem to be missing something, Will.”

Will remains so fixed on his agenda, on bolstering the pretence of confidence in the face of the man in front of him and his meaty breath, that he misses the jerk on the chain the sends the hook spiralling to the ground at his feet. His fingers tense instinctively on the trigger in his pocket, but his reactions are slow.

“You come in here like you have something to offer” states Mason, a brittle fist connecting with the right side of Will’s neck before the gun makes it out of his coat. Will folds, landing on his side and scrambling towards upright. Mason’s foot kicks through limbs and jams into Will’s ribs. It’s enough to knock the air out of him, and the momentum is enough to give Will a grip on Mason’s leg, tugging him down to his level.

“You’re forgetting,” says Mason, twisting onto his knees, trying to pin Will down and failing, “that I’m used to taking on people and getting my way.”

Spit comes from his mouth with the exertion. Will makes another attempt at reaching into his pocket, his other hand on the ground to push himself upright. Mason recognises the movement, reaches to his side and slams something heavy and metal across Will’s knuckles. Will shouts – an instinctual response to more pain than he’s steeled himself for. He loses the ability to slow down the motions as they happen to him, forgets how to structure an effective retaliation as the intersection of blunt aggression between them starts blacking his vision. He feels the contact of his knuckles against skin, fabric, each time he connects to Mason but he’s feeling like bits of him are coming undone.

“I didn’t come here – to fight with you” he spits, Mason now pinned beneath him and a feeling like a tooth loose in his mouth, ready to be spat out or choked on.

Red flows from Mason’s nose like a reminder that he’s human, and he laughs.

“That’s why you’re losing.”

“I came here because I need you to beat him” says Will, his weight pressing onto Mason’s shoulders, his coat hanging heavy and damp on smarting skin. “It’s in _our_ interests that you win but you’re not going to catch him before he gets to  _you unless you use my help_.”

The words aren’t as clear with the stress and exertion needed to keep Mason down, but Will’s counting on him understanding. He sees the hand reaching for his pocket a beat too late; the gun is pressed to the back of his throat before he’s got his balance and the click of it being cocked reverberates through his cheeks, as Mason twists their bodies round so that Will’s backed onto the straw covered ground.

“You’re not a _composer_ , are you?” says Mason, using one hand to maintain pressure on the gun and another to unhook the buttons of Will’s coat. Will’s hands lie uselessly at his side as he waits for opportunity to use them without the risk of a trigger blowing out the back of his neck. Mason tugs the heavy coat open, adjusts his knees to so they’re resting on Will’s legs, not the coat itself. “C’mon, lift” he says, pulling one side of the coat as far off Will’s shoulder as the position allows. Will raises his shoulder, glares at Mason with his mouth still wrapped around the barrel as he slinks his arm out from the sleeve. Mason smiles and Will starts to wonder how Margot could have waited so long to try to kill him.

“The thing is that there are the composers, the people who structure the world around him” continues Mason, switching hands around the base of the gun and pulling Will’s arm from the opposite coat sleeve,

“And there’s the people who make up the  _notes_  of the  _symphonies_.”

Will shakes the second sleeve of the coat off his arms, tenses his fingers and looks for the weakness in Mason’s forearm that will let him pull the gun away. Reasoning with Mason seems further from his grasp, as is a viable physical advantage. There are only so many vowel sounds he can make to persuade Mason to see sense.

“I’m guessing that this _ally_ you’re trying to tell me about, he’s a composer too. It is a he, isn’t it? It’s a he.” Mason reaches a hand behind him and Will hears the clank of metal, begins to understand the full benefit that his lack of coat now affords Mason.

“Another composer is worth my attention. And I know this other man is a composer, because look at the sound you’re making, little note.” Metal swings into Will’s chest, hard and heavy with a tail of chain. Will convulses, feels the excess of pressure on him, around him, knocking at the back of his teeth and pressing into his legs, his chest. He raises his hands up to fight, to push back. Angles his wrist to force Mason’s gun hand away from him and jerks his body sideways so the gun is out of his mouth and then smacks it out of reach of both of them. It’s not ideal, but at least this way he’s  _fighting_.

What stills him for just a second too long is the  _way_  he’s still pinioned, Mason astride him struggling with the intersection of chain, clasp and hook, Will trying to coordinate a more effective retaliation than thrashing. It’s a specific kind of pressure coming from Mason – it’s smaller than the weight of metal or the grip of his legs but it’s more noticeable, somehow – and when Will recognises it, confirms it in the way Mason licks at his own lips, greedy and indelicate, Will finds a new kind of fear in his gut that he’s not used to, like a sudden and complete loss of agency where he hadn’t considered it a risk before.

“The thing is,” says Mason, languishing in the sound of his own voice as he clicks metal into metal, twisting himself easily away from Will’s jerking protestations “that you, little  _song_ , you’re only as much worth as the person who wrote you. And you’re telling me that someone’s coming for me but you’re in no –“

“He’ll strip the skin from your bones and  _eat_  you, Mason.”

The threat sounds like something Will’s hoping for, something that would protect him. It makes the idea of Hannibal into something reassuring for a short moment. It’s wiped clean away as Mason tugs hard on the chain and sends a cold and sudden constriction around Will’s chest. His shirt catches and wraps up around the chain and there’s loss of warmth as his body lifts upwards, held by a single loop under his arms which threatens to push his shoulders out of their sockets as his heels raise inches from the floor.

“So?” asks Mason, voice nasal from the backup of blood jamming his sinuses. He positions himself behind Will, manipulates the lengths of chain to create a second loop around the bottom of Will’s ribs, links it to the top one creating a kind of sling.

Will wants to leave Mason to the inevitable fallout of his arrogance and glibness. He’s accepted already that he’s too far in to emerge unscathed or still breathing; it seems like no great loss to the world for Mason to suffer a poetic demise and to hell with all of them. _Except_. Except, he’s still haunted by some determination to _protect_. Air stutters in his lungs.

“You’ve set yourself up as a _babydaddy_ to my legacy” spits Mason, his grimacing smile only catching up with him a full beat after the words have left his mouth, “and then you walk in here like you have something to _offer_ me…”

The constriction around Will’s ribcage pushes on the organs beneath it. His hands pull at the top loop of chain and his fingertips turn red, then purple, at the pressure.

“What did you _think_ was going to happen to you?”

There are voices outside the barn, the sounds of life at the Verger residence carrying on, deliberately oblivious to the activities of the heir. Will slows his breathing; tries to limit the movement of each exhale and inhale and force enough air into his throat for an answer.

“Don’t…underestimate him, Mason.”

Mason’s laughter bounds across the space around them.

“He’s tried to sic me on you already.”

“And clearly this has worked out perfectly! Why am I supposed to see you as a _threat_?”

“I told you I didn’t come here to kill you.”

Mason’s behind him, gloved hands pushing at the cold small of Will’s back, just enough for the force of the swing to trap his fingertips and speed the solid feeling of suffocation.

“He’ll kill you out of pride alone.” The words catch on dry lips. “You can get to him first.”

“You don’t _cry_ easy, do you?”

Mason’s face blurs in front of him, the sight of him pulling gloves off his hands with his teeth, then retreats.

Air is getting harder to swallow.

A warm hand reaches round to Will’s jaw, pulls his face sideways then shakes loose.

“The pigs” Will manages. “Margot…she told me.”

Mason says something indecipherable against the rattle of metal and hot dry hands thumb at waistband of Will’s black pants.

“You can train them _on him_ ” says Will, arms stretching above him for some traction on the vertical chain.

In spite of the numbness creeping through him, he still registers the cold air against his legs as the fabric is peeled off them.

Mason’s breath licks at Will’s ear. “What do you know about pigs?”

There’s not enough air for explanation. Will grips the chain, pushing his palm onto the point where the hook links the loops together and grants himself a moment to focus on the pain it affords him.

Hands slink round to his hips, fabric from Mason’s clothes rough against cold skin. The shape that presses against Will is unmistakeable, unavoidable. _The pain from the hook._

“You’ve neglected to tell me” says Mason, speaking as though his actions were something separate to his agenda, “who this big bad is supposed to be.”

The fabric shield between Mason and Will disappears and the skin against his is too _warm_. Like all of him is suffocating against it.

The terror that opens in Will as Mason pushes against him burns like something wretched.

The inevitability of cracking at least one rib doesn’t seem so dangerous in this moment. Will lurches against the chain, pushing himself away from Mason in one clumsy swing. In the next, his feet stamp behind him. The smack of his boot against skin resounds through him more fiercely than the splintering in his chest. It’s like victory.

“Your fighting is weak” says Mason with a grunt. “Even Margot’s got more bite than that.”

The gurgle of Will’s throat covers the sound of Mason spitting on his fingers.

“It’s Hannibal.”

The words come out with blood on them.

Damp fingers grip onto Will’s stomach and thigh with the confidence of someone who knows there’s no more energy for retribution.

Will imagines himself as a house, closing deadlocks over the door, shutting inside frames and arming himself against the prospect of being _broken_ _into_.

“See, _now_ you’re crying.”

Mason pushes closer. _Almost in_. Takes his hand off Will’s stomach to pull his face back towards him by the hair and licks at the wet cheek beneath Will’s closed eyes.

Colder air floods the barn and Will breathes through gritted teeth.

“Will.”

The voice is different, urgent. The hands on Will are colder, more precise in their movements, and the contact from Mason is gone. There’s a sound like a shout, and a crack, and like a heavy weight falling hard on straw.

“Will, I need you to open your eyes for me.”

Will is lifted up, the metal pinning him to the air seeming to soften. _That voice_. His eyes open to the sight of Mason’s limbs contorted on the ground to his left. Mason’s face is out of sight, behind him. He’s lifted to a standing position, stiff fabric against his frozen shoulders, hands peeling the metal out of the tangle of his shirt, pulling the fabric away from his skin and pushing light and firm against his chest.

Will raises his eyes to where Hannibal is treating him with surgical detachment. It doesn’t feel like he’s being rescued, like this. A sting of vulnerability propels him to reach down to his pants, to pull himself back together. Splinters of searing pain stop him before Hannibal has a chance to, but the doctor recognises the intention of the movement.

“In a moment, Will. Tell me. Where does your breath stop?”

Will tracks the tight rattle of his breath to the stripe of red raised skin where the top loop had held him up.

“You may be best attended to in a hospital…”

Will turns his head to the crumpled shape at his feet by way of a question. With his upturned chin, closed eyes and gaping nostrils, Mason has taken on an even more piggish appearance.

“He’s alive” assures Hannibal, calculated malice present in his features. He crouches on his knees, scoops the fabric of Will’s trousers up and pushes them back into place. Will stares ahead, counts the second it takes for Hannibal to look for further damage with his hand and only tries to breathe again when Hannibal is upright and facing him.

“Fortunately I possess no small surgical skill and can care for your injuries in a rudimentary fashion.”

Will bites his lip into a hopeless smile.

“Good.” There’s concern on Hannibal’s face, tempered with distaste and cold pragmatism.

Hannibal bends to pick Will’s coat from the ground and wraps his free arm around Will’s back, tucking a hand under his arm with careful support and pulling the damp fabric of the shirt over skin. “He will wake soon and we should be away from here when he does. Until we are ready. My car is close. You can walk?”

Will places a numb hand on the shoulder of Hannibal’s jacket, holding for balance as he kicks his heel forward into a lopsided step.

“Come. Before we are interrupted.”

As Hannibal lays Will down in the dark back seat of his Bentley, a bag under him to raise his shoulders and a blanket over him to steady the cold shakes, he reassures himself that he's still not out of the fight, not quite. He feels the smooth surge of the motor starting up, carrying them away, and blinks back the impression that he’s being transported to his own wake.

 


End file.
